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Vanessa Hudgens just showed how she and the High School Musical cast are still in this together — even 18 years later. In a new Instagram post following her participation on The Masked Singer, Vanessa, 35, made an iconic reference to one specific HSM character: her ex-boyfriend Zac Efron‘s Troy Bolton.
“T as in Troy? No, T as in THE winner of #TheMaskedSinger!” she captioned her post on Wednesday, May 22. The caption was most likely referring to the necklace that Troy gives Vanessa’s character, Gabriella, in one scene from the hit Disney Channel film trilogy. Vanessa and Zac, 36, previously dated from 2005 to 2010.
Vanessa’s followers reveled in her cheeky caption, as one commented, “Troy Bolton reference is killing me.” Another chimed in, “If you’re an HSM fan you knew it was her the second she opened her mouth to sing ! vanessa hudgens ftw [sic].”
The actress — who is currently pregnant with her and husband Cole Tucker‘s first child — won season 11 of The Masked Singer, starring as The Goldfish until her big reveal. She opened up about her journey on the show during an interview with Entertainment Tonight.
“It was definitely quite the ride,” she told the outlet. “A ride I did not think would affect me so deeply.”
Since audiences didn’t know it was Vanessa until she unmasked herself, the Disney Channel alum explained how this experience made her feel “completely free.”
“I’ve been in the spotlight for many, many moons now, and there’s just a preconceived idea, I think, when you see yourself on stage, that you’re familiar with,” she noted. “And being able to take that away and be completely stripped of that and show up as myself and feel completely free to do so, because I was completely covered up really just gave me a sense of freedom that I hadn’t had in a minute. And it was really empowering.”
Vanessa elaborated that she signed onto the show because the opportunity “came at the perfect time.”
“We were on strike and I was trying to figure out my next move, and this is the space that I actually could work in,” she said, referring to the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike. “And my fans have been asking for me to sing more. I was like, ‘Well, this is the way to give it to them and see who the real fans are!’ And they definitely showed up.”
